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June 2020

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Cutting off donations to my alma mater By Thomas Lifson

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/cutting_off_donations_to_my_alma_mater.html

“What to do when your college apologizes for begging for money  “in the midst of this necessary national reckoning on systemic racism and police brutality.”

Henry Wickham, Kenyon College class of 1972, has agreed to share with readers a letter he wrote to our mutual alma mater, which we both have watched get captured by the left.  We both decided to stop donating to the college after being appalled upon receiving a recent fundraising appeal that contained the following disclaimer:

We know that fundraising for Kenyon likely isn’t your primary focus right now, in the midst of this necessary national reckoning on systemic racism and police brutality. 

For those who are unfamiliar with Kenyon, it used to be a rigirous classical liberal arts college, blessed with one on the most beautiful campuses in the world, and at the time we attended it, dedicated to teaching the foundations of the liberal arts and sciences.

 Here is how Henry responded. I think that this situation describes many schools, especially but not limited to the more highly selective and higher prestige campuses.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Charter Schools’ Enemies Block Black Success Teachers unions are gaining in their fight to stop students and resources from moving toward what works. By Thomas Sowell

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-enemies-block-black-success-11592520626?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

For decades, there has been widespread anxiety over how, when or whether the educational test score gap between white and non-white youngsters could be closed. But that gap has already been closed by the Success Academy charter school network in New York City.

Their predominantly black and Hispanic students already pass tests in mathematics and English at a higher rate than any school district in the entire state. That includes predominantly white and Asian school districts where parental income is some multiple of what it is among Success Academy students.

New York’s charter school students are predominantly black and Hispanic, and live in low-income neighborhoods. In 2019, most students in the city’s public schools failed to pass the statewide tests in mathematics and English. But most of the city’s charter school students passed in both subjects.

Such charter school results undermine theories of genetic determinism, claims of cultural bias in the tests and assertions that racial “integration” is necessary for blacks to reach educational parity with whites.

Back In 2013, a higher percentage of the fifth-graders in a Harlem charter school passed the mathematics test than any other public school fifth-graders in the entire state of New York.

The success of New York City’s charter schools is not only a threat to educational dogmas. Competition from charter schools is an existential threat to traditional public schools in low-income minority communities, which tend to have even lower educational outcomes than traditional public schools as a whole.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Confessions of John Bolton It’s quaint, we know, but whatever happened to honor in public service?

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-confessions-of-john-bolton-11592522040?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

On the matter of John Bolton’s book, it’s hard to tell who looks worse: the former national security adviser for writing it while President Trump is still in office, his lifelong political opponents who now hail Mr. Bolton as a truth teller, or the President of the United States as depicted in the book.

Mr. Bolton has been a frequent Journal contributor across his long public life, and he’s a defender of American interests. We have gone to the barricades on his behalf more than a few times. His account of Mr. Trump’s private words and actions sounds right because the President often says similar things in public. As far as we know, Mr. Bolton has never lied to us.

Yet we also have to wonder what happened to honor in public service. Presidents should have some expectation that their advisers will wait until they kiss and tell, especially about their private conversations with foreign leaders. It used to be that advisers wouldn’t write about the Presidents they served until they had left office.

These days too many advisers bid for fame the minute they leave the White House, and Mr. Bolton has managed to do so in the middle of a re-election campaign. Mr. Trump didn’t treat him well, but the President treats few people well beyond his immediate family. Mr. Bolton certainly knew what to expect when he accepted the job.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Brooks Shooting: The Political Prosecutor Caves In to the Mob By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/brooks-shooting-the-political-prosecutor-caves-in-to-the-mob/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=second

Capital murder charges conform to the slanderous anti-cop narrative, not the facts in this case.

If you broadcast that you are willing to be bullied, then you invite the mob to rule. When the mob rules, you get brass-knuckles politics, not justice.

You get a hyper-political county prosecutor, under the corruption microscope as he desperately seeks reelection, filing trumped-up, mob-driven charges before the actual investigators have a chance to finish their work.

You get a capital murder charge against a police officer who returned fire after being shot at with a taser by a fleeing suspect.

A taser that the fleeing suspect, a criminal with a violent history, stole from the police while they attempted to arrest him on a well-founded charge.

A taser being the very weapon that the same prosecutor, just days earlier, had deemed a deadly weapon under Georgia State law. But of course, that was then, when the same prosecutor was addressing the use of tasers by police. This is now, when a criminal used a stolen taser on police. In mob-stricken Atlanta, the prosecutor says the latter use of deadly force is no threat at all.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

When Will We Stand Up To The Tyrants Of Woke Conformity?

By on June 19th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/17/when-will-we-stand-up-to-the-tyrants-of-woke-conformity/

Not so long ago, someone told us “You. Can’t. Say. Anything.” This is America in 2020. Those who speak outside the narrative established by a hard-left mob that has marched through our institutions are blacklisted. If we fail to mount a forceful resistance, there’s a grim future awaiting us.

We’ve seen this coming. The casualty list has been growing for years. The purge is now white hot. What was a non-controversial statement last week is grounds for a death sentence tomorrow. It seems every day we see someone caving in with a groveling apology, declaring they suddenly have a lot to learn, swearing they’re looking forward to the moment they can meet with their hostage-takers and work toward a resolution that will appease them.

But it will never be enough. Apologies and appeasement only encourage the bullies. The Woke mob never sleeps. It lives to cancel the lives of others. We are warned: Conform or else.

No manifesto exists to guide the shock troops through their revolutionary occupation of our society. But on Monday, the day Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy was forced to ask forgiveness for the sin of wearing a One America News t-shirt, praising the network, and criticizing the mainstream media, a maniacal Twitter storm from a leftist blogger laid out the belief system that undergirds the movement:

Mike Gundy cannot remain the OK State head coach. Too influential of a position in society. Fire him, unless he agrees to get extensive psychological help.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

We Must Stop the Great Unraveling

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-editors/refusing-mob-rule-defending-american-values/

Across the United States, a great unraveling is in progress. A rolling crime wave, under the guise of social activism, has left city after American city shattered and smoldering. Armed anarchists seized territory inside Seattle with the blessing of local government. In Minneapolis and other cities, a campaign to enfeeble or eliminate the police has gained full legitimacy. In Kentucky, the governor has vowed to provide free health care only to one racial group. In the private sector, companies such as Uber Eats have pledged their commitment to a policy of race-conscious discrimination as well. And major media organs sanction all of the above as proper and good.

The unraveling goes further still. Social-justice mobs have taken aim at freedom of expression, inventing new heresies daily and ruining the lives of those who unwittingly give voice to them. Forced confessions and language proscriptions are the order of the day. Poetry, fiction, movies, and television shows—including children’s cartoons—are canceled and excised from history. Indeed, all art and opinion are now subject to the chopping block lest they prove insufficiently propagandistic.

To rewrite the present, the mob has rewritten the past. They have forced upon us a distorted and grotesque version of American history. With the support of corporations and education boards, school textbooks and curricula tell of an unredeemable America founded not on the promise of human liberty but human bondage. What’s more, this history discounts the transformative progress on racial equality for which Americans—black and white—have given their lives.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Bolton Is Called On a Point of Old-Fashioned Honor

By on June 19th, 2020

www.nysun.com/editorials/john-bolton-is-called-on-a-point-of-old-fashioned/91165/

Of all that has been disclosed so far in John Bolton’s campaign to get his book published, the most significant — at least to us — is the classified information non-disclosure agreement that binds Mr. Bolton to keep our national secrets. It starts with the words “intending to be bound.” It describes his obligations in detail. It places the burdens on Mr. Bolton. It ends with his signature. So whatever else is bound up in this dispute, one of the issues will be the value of Mr. Bolton’s word.

We understand one question in the lawsuit the government just filed will be whether the former national security adviser has actually fulfilled the agreement’s terms. And whether the White House, with its vow to focus solely on protecting national secrets, has been acting in good faith. Or whether it’s trying to protect President Trump politically. It’s hard to spot in the court documents, though, anything filed so that far releases Mr. Bolton from his agreement.

So for Mr. Bolton to plunge ahead with publication absent an unambiguous closing letter from the government would be — at least to us — a shocking breach. We don’t know Mr. Bolton well personally. We have, though, worn our fingers to the stubs over the years defending him. We can recall few diplomatic missions so heroic as Mr. Bolton’s leadership of President George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign to get the United Nations to repeal its resolution equating Zionism and racism.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

If Black Lives Matter, then don’t Palestinian Lives? Nothing is sacred and all is fair game when it comes to the “woke” generation taking personal or political offense. By Ruthie Blum

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/if-black-lives-matter-then-dont-palestinian-lives-matter-opinion-631983

Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters across the West are on a rampage against cultural and historical symbols that they deem racist. No book, film, play or monument is safe from their scrutiny and disdain.

Minnesota removed Mark Twain and Harper Lee novels from its schools’ curricula. HBO pulled Gone with the Wind from its movie line-up.

The Paramount Network canceled the new season of the popular reality show Cops before its June 15 premiere. Other studios and companies are rushing to follow suit with everything from sit-coms to old classics.

Statues of American founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been defaced. Even the legacy of Britain’s lionized late prime minister Winston Churchill is under assault.

Indeed, nothing is sacred and all is fair game when it comes to the “woke” generation taking personal or political offense.

Given the unapologetic ignorance displayed by students everywhere these days, it is heartening to discover that the young people demonstrating from California to Melbourne are remotely familiar with the iconic figures they’ve been trashing since the horrific killing of George Floyd on May 25 by a Minneapolis police officer. While most are able to rattle off the names of every Kardashian, sports star and Instagram influencer, few appear to be versed in much of anything other than fashionable slogans and platitudes about the world in which they live.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

To ‘Annex’ West Bank Land or Not to ‘Annex’: The Hour Draws Near By P. David Hornik

By on June 19th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/06/18/to-annex-west-bank-land-or-not-to-annex-the-hour-draws-near-n545168

July 1, which is fast approaching, is the day on which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying Israel will start the process of applying sovereignty to the strategically vital Jordan Valley and the Israeli communities throughout the West Bank.

The issue remains fraught with controversy. The Trump administration, which seemed to green-light the move with its “Peace to Prosperity” plan, is still giving mixed signals and has a lot else on its plate. Rumors are flying about whether and what Netanyahu plans to “annex” (a convenient misnomer since the lands in question were not part of a recognized sovereign state before Israel regained them in the 1967 war).

The Trump plan is not, of course, just a plan for an Israeli application of sovereignty. It envisions Israel taking permanent control of about 30 percent of the West Bank (historically known as Judea and Samaria) while the other 70 percent would go to a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Not only are the Israeli right and left divided (predictably) on the merits of the plan, but there’s sharp disagreement even within the Israeli right.

For its more ideological wing, any talk of a Palestinian state is heresy. For its more pragmatic wing, a prospective demilitarized Palestinian entity (a “state minus” as Netanyahu calls it) would make sense because Israel cannot and should not annex over two million Palestinians to itself.

More significant, though, is the heated right-left dispute on the issue.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

John Bolton’s book looks like a fairy-tale for Trump haters By Andrea Widburg

By on June 19th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/john_boltons_book_looks_like_a_fairytale_for_trump_haters.html

The Trump administration has sued to stop John Bolton’s purported “tell-all” from being released next week on the ground that it is filled with classified information that affects national security. That suit hasn’t stopped Bolton’s publisher from leaking the supposed “bombshells” in the book.

Those bombshells will excite Trump haters, but those who support Trump will immediately recognize them as lies, deliberate misinterpretations, and resentment. Expect the activist Democrat media to sing the book’s praises, but that won’t change the outcome of the November election.

The book’s biggest alleged bombshell, which Bolton writes about in the Wall Street Journal (paywall), is his claim that, in June 2019 at the Osaka G20, Trump begged Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him get reelected. According to Bolton, Xi said that America’s relationship with China was important and that it was wrong for some in America to want a Cold War. Trump countered that Democrats were hostile to China and then, says Bolton, the begging started:

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